Luke 6:6-11

Luke chapter 6, reading verses 6 through 11 for our text and study this morning. And it came to pass also on another Sabbath that he entered into the synagogue and taught there was a man whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and Pharisees watched him. Whether he would heal on the Sabbath day, they might find an accusation. against him. But he knew their thoughts and said to the man which have the withered hand, rise up, stand forth in the midst. And he arose and stood forth. Then said Jesus unto him, I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good or to do evil? to save life or destroy it. and looking round about upon them all, he said unto them, under the man, stretched forth thy hand, and he did so, and his hand was restored whole as the other. They were filled with madness and commune one with another what they might do to Jesus. May God bless to us his sacred and holy word this morning. In 1942, Churchill’s leadership over England was being heavily criticized. Defect this, Defect this criticism, Churchill decided he would tell a tale from ancient China. He says there was a custom. in China that anyone who wished could criticize the emperor. However, you had to follow up your criticism by committing suicide. So that very great respect would be paid to your words and no ulterior motive would be attached. Churchill went on to say that he thought that that Britain should adopt the same thing, that it was a wise custom. Then you’d have to be very cautious about criticizing the prime minister of England. It seems that the Jewish religious leaders criticized our Lord about everything he did or everything his disciples did. Repeatedly in the Gospels, he’s always being criticized. They were very quick to find fault with Christ concerning the Sabbath day. Now, you recall, first they complained about the day being violated by Christ’s disciples in verses 1 to 5 in our previous study where they had plucked grain, rubbed the husk off of it, and ate it raw on the Sabbath day, as they were traveling evidently from one place of worship to another, another tabernac or another synagogue, where Jesus would speak. and being hungry, they, you know, grab something to eat. Jesus refuted this criticism by demonstrating from Scripture by David and the showbread, you recall, that works of necessity satisfy one’s hungry, hunger, does not violate the Sabbath day. We mentioned that the showbread was always replaced on the Sabbath. So it must have been the Sabbath day. when he got the bread from the table of show bread. Christ as Lord of the Sabbath has the right to determine what is and what is not proper behavior on the Sabbath. Verse 5 of this chapter indicates, he is not going to follow the traditions of the Pharisees and all their ideas. He’s going to follow Scripture. Now we see the Pharisees again criticizing Christ, with regard to the Sabbath Day. Only this time, it has to do with the healing of a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath day. Again, our Lord refutes the Pharisees, demolishing their argument, exposing their hypocrisy. The Pharisees are not too pleased, and so they plot to put Christ to death. I want to talk about… the Sabbath and works of mercy. Now let me begin by saying this. You find works of mercy are proper works for the Sabbath day. Now, your malice and evil plotting are improper works for the Sabbath day. Verse 6, or excuse me, verse 7 indicates they watched him. They might find accusation against him. And in verse 11, we see that they were filled with madness and they commune with one another what they might do to Jesus. And Matthew’s gospel said that they went out and took counsel together how they might destroy him, referring to the same issue, the same incident, Matthew 12, 14. Now, look at Christ’s question in verse 9. He says, I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good or to do evil? to save life or destroy life? Now, what he’s going to do, of course, is they’re the ones that are plotting evil. They’re the ones that are talking about destroying life. And so he’s going to ask them, what do you think’s best to do on the Sabbath Day? There was something in his question, you see, that was very cutting against the Pharisees. If they honestly looked at their own heart and what they were doing, the Pharisees were extremely critical of Christ. about the Sabbath, but they failed miserably to see that they were the ones who were violating the Sabbath Day. So they were plotting evil against Christ, trying to find fault, and they were the very ones that were willing to destroy life by killing Jesus Christ. What hypocrites, the Pharisees are here. Jesus is condemned for a good work on the Sabbath day. Well, they see no problem plotting an evil work. on the Sabbath thing. That’s about as extreme opposites as you can get. No wonder in Mark’s Gospel in the same incident, Mark 3-5, we read, and he looked roundabout on them with anger being grieved for the hardness of their hearts. He was angry about how they were handling this situation. Wicked men are such… absurd and unreasonable man that they studied to do evil to someone who is doing good. The Pharisees are so blind to their own corrupt state that they don’t seem to realize thou shalt not kill applies to them in this incident. Of course, they think they’re doing God’s work by putting to death the Son of God himself here, Jesus Christ. what hardness of heart to begrudge this poor man a healing on the Sabbath day let us learn from this the desperate wickedness of the human heart and may I add to this even those who are religious what evil had our Lord done that he should be so hated so despised that they would want to murder him he was the holy harmless undefiled one. Spend his days doing, going about doing good, the Bible says. And they hated and without a cause, scripture reviews. Of course, we shouldn’t think that this treatment of Christ is rare. For the unconverted heart, according to scripture, hates God. We read in the book of Psalms 815 about the haters of the Lord. And in Romans 1, Romans 1, we read in the book of Psalms 815, about the Lord. We read about those who are haters of God, the ungodly. The ungodly would like to get rid of God. And the way they treat it, Christ, of course, indicates exactly how they would treat God. Because He was God manifest in the flesh. Here we find that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and who can know it. They don’t even know their own heart. They were religious men. highly respected in society. But look what awful depravity reigns in their heart. Remember in the Old Testament when Elisha was going to anoint Hezhao as the next king of Syria. And when he looked on him, he wept. And Hezio asked, why are you weeping, my Lord? And Elisha said, because I know the evil thou wilt do under the children of Israel. Lysius speaks about all the cruel things that this man would do, ripping up their children from the womb, dashing them the pieces, burning their cities, and so forth, as the text reveals. And Haseel denies that he would do such things. Am I such a dog that I would do such a thing as this? He didn’t know his own heart. God knew his heart. And Elisha revealed his heart, yes, you will do these things. Oh, I would never do that. Yes, you will. This is why man needs a new heart. A new heart and a new spirit will I give thee, the Lord says in Ezekiel 36. Do you have a new heart? Because it don’t matter how religious you are, unless you have a new heart, you’re still having evil reign within you and controlling your actions. and you will not love the Lord God as you ought. You’re not going to be able to. So your malice and evil plotting are improper works for the Sabbath. That’s not what you should be doing. But your works of mercy are proper works for the Sabbath, as he says in verses 6 through 10, he reveals the healing. Now, as Jesus taught at the synagogue on the Sabbath, there was a man present. who had a withered hand. Now, it was his right hand. And most of us, of course, are right-handed, and that’s your main hand for working and things of this nature, writing, and whatever. That’s the strong hand, usually, for most people. It’s a significant loss. It meant he probably didn’t have the ability to be the breadwinner and provide for his family and so forth. Jesus takes note of his family. him and has him stand in the midst of the synagogue before the congregation, verse 8. Now, Jesus is going to provide some important teaching regarding the Sabbath by demolishing the false ideas of the Pharisees regarding this day. The question that Christ asked in verse 9, it’s not just for the Pharisees. I think it had a pointed reference to them, but it’s for the whole thing. congregation to consider. Christ boldly asserts here the right to do works of mercy even on a day when it’s commanded on that day thou shalt do no work. Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God in it thou shalt not do any work. Exodus 2010. But that there is an exception. Of course you can do works of mercy. You can be compassionate. And so he heals the man in verse 10 with regard to this hand. And he tells him to stretch forth by hand and when he does it’s restored. So this principle has a wide application with regard to the Fourth Commandment. The Fourth Commandment was never meant to forbid you aiding someone who is suffering or someone in need. It was never meant to forbid you from showing kindness and compassion on the Sabbath day. Works of mercy are proper and right to do on the Sabbath day. In Matthew’s Gospel, the Holy Spirit, provides an illustration that further extends this teaching of our Lord. In chapter 12, verse 11, in the same incident, he says this, what man shall there be among you that shall have one sheep and if he fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold of him and lift him out? Now, Jesus says, let’s just take a common case here. Suppose one of your lambs from your flock falls into a pit. Are you going to leave him in a pit? The whole day? While he’s suffering and bemoaning there in the pit, bang, you know, crying out. Is that the right thing for you to do? Wouldn’t you without hesitation to delay work in some fashion? Maybe you have to get a rope around them or whatever you have to do to get him to the point where you could pull him up out of the pit or whatever the case is. You’re going to do something to get him out of there. Wouldn’t it be hard-hearted to leave that poor animal in that pit? You know, the scripture says, A merciful man regarded the life of his beast in Proverbs 12-10. don’t you have an obligation with regard to the animal and taking care of it? So Jesus concludes, how much better is a man than a sheep? If you do that for a sheep, you mean to tell me you wouldn’t do it for a man? Didn’t Jesus tell us that in the sermon on the mount how the birds are provided for by the Lord and how that you’re much better than the birds? Well, you’re much better than the birds. too. Now sheep are useful. I mean, they give us wool. They provide food. But man are better. They’re made in the image of God. They can, or at least they are capable when they are regenerated, of course, of truly worshipping and knowing, loving, and glorifying and worshiping God. So Jesus indicates there are more of the good things that we can do on the Sabbath than just going to the synagogue or the church. You can do other actions that are good on the Sabbath day that are beneficial, helping the afflicted, caring for the sick, relieving the poor. All are good works. You can keep these things and still keep the Sabbath holy. Now, we must not abuse any freedoms that we have in Christ, but a true act of mercy doesn’t breach the law of God, and that’s his point. So you find works of mercy are proper. works for the Sabbath thing. That seems clear. Secondly, you find the Lord Jesus Christ possesses perfect knowledge of all your thoughts. Now you’ll notice in verse 8, but he knew their thoughts. If you read through the Gospels, you’re going to come across many instances where Christ knows what people are thinking, and he reveals it. Your thoughts are not secret. They may be secret. other human beings, but they’re not secret to God. And the omniscient Christ here knows, we should certainly keep this in mind when we come to worship on the Sabbath day. I remember how on the book of Amos, I believe it is, where God reveals what the Jews are thinking on the Sabbath day. When is the Sabbath going to be over? So we can buy and sell and, you know, throw some chaff in with the wheat, make a little extra money, cheat people out of things, you know, that’s what they’re thinking about. Christ knows if you’re sincere or hypocritical when you come to worship. In Revelation 2.23, we read, all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts. Christ knows what’s going on within our hearts. This provides evidence that Christ is not a mere man. It provides evidence of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Lord, see if not his man, see if, man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. 1st Samuel 16, 7. It shows that Christ was God overall blessed forever, as Romans 9.5 tells us. So you have proof of Christ’s deity here. Notice also that Christ’s perfect knowledge of your thought, should have a humbling effect upon you. Lafayette, the French general and statesman, served as a volunteer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution 1777 to 1781. But he said he was once a prisoner for a long time. And he tells us he was shut up in this little room, this gloomy prison in this little room he was in. He said, the dreadful thing about this room was the door of the room had a small hole in it about this size. And he said, night and day, there was a soldier that sat outside and had his eye looking through that door hole at him all the time. He said, all I could see was the eye. That’s all the time. When he looked looked at the door and he saw that eye, that’s all he could see. So night and day, he saw that eye. So night and day, said that’s what he had going on. It was dreadful, he said. To be watched every single second, everything you did. Whether he lay down and slept, whether he ate, whether he relieved himself, whatever it was, he was being watched. Now, as bad as that is, think about this. Jesus Christ not only sees everything you do, he knows everything you do. Think about that. That can be frightening and that can be humbling. The Pharisees were in the house of God, but their thoughts were evil and perverse, and Jesus knew it. It did not escape his attention. He knew their hypocrisy. He knew they were the ones violating the Sabbath day. Zachariah chapter 7, verse 10, says, let none of you imagine evil against your brother in your heart. But what were these men doing? This was far wrong. worse than when they’re imagined evil of healing on the Sabbath day, some man with a withered hand. Obedience to God and the duties of the second table are usually evidence, a true evidence, or touchstone whereby we contest sincerity of our faith. For proves your heart is subjected to God if your heart is filled with true love to your neighbor. If a man say I love God and hateeth his brother, he’s a liar. for he whom loveth not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he have not seen? Verse John 420. What a check Christ omniscience should be to every sinful, every wandering thought, especially on the Sabbath day. What good does it do to put on religious pretensions when your heart is far from God as theirs was? How humbling it is when you realize that Christ, knows and all the vain and worldly thoughts that pass through our mind every day. Your fellow worshippers may not know you, but God knows you more than you know yourself. We’re supposed to bring every thought captive to Christ, and that’s not an easy task. David was right when he confessed, cleanse thou me from secret faults. Not that they’re secret from God, but they’re secret from men. And I like what he says in Psalm 19, verse 14. Let the men. meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. So you find the Lord Jesus Christ possesses perfect knowledge of all your thoughts. The third thing we see here is this. You find the performance of the impossible something careful to ponder. Now you’ll notice in verse 6, the last phrase of it, there was a man whose right hand was withered. But then we read in verse 10, Jesus said, and looking around about upon them all, he said, unto the man, stretch forth thy hand, and he did so. And his hand was restored whole as the other. Here you have a man’s obedience to the apparent impossible. Stretch forth thy hand. Christ’s command at first glance, seems unreasonable. Withered hands cannot be stretched forth. It’s humanly impossible. But the poor suffering man was not stopped by any doubts or reasonings of any kind. He simply attempted to do what God commanded, what Christ commanded him here. And lo and behold, he found his wither hand cured and he was able to stretch it out. He acted in faith, believing he would be enabled to do what God, through Christ here, commanded him to do. It was precisely this act of obedience in this manner that he received a blessing. And he was cured by Christ. Now, Christ’s command here does not presume that this man had natural ability to do this. He didn’t have natural ability. He could not stretch for it. his hand. That’s a false idea that the command somehow assumes that the man had the ability on his own to do it. Christ commanded the impossible. And then by his power working with the faith that he had given this man enabled him to stretch forth his hand. That’s what we have to see. Now, why did I bring this up? Let me apply this. This lesson to a dead sinner coming to Christ. The case of the withered man provides sort of an apt illustration of the natural state of man fallen in Adam. It’s truly one of inability. Now of course the withered man was one of bodily or physical inability, whereas our state in fallen and atom is one of more or spiritual inability. Being fallen in an atom, your spiritual state is described as being without strength, dead in trespasses and sins, the carnal mind that we have, not subjected to God, alienated from God, unable to do anything good or pleasing to God. Your powers are impaired. Your mind is darkened. Your will is in bondage to sin and Satan. affections are alienated from God. In simple terms, if I can put it this way, your hands are withered. You have total inability to do what God commands on a spiritual level. You can’t do it. Nevertheless, God commands the sinner to repent of his sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now it’s a major error to conclude because God gives a divine command. You you have the natural ability to fulfill it. That’s your Armenian doctrine. It is Christ alone by the power of His grace who can heal you. God command you to do what you are not able to do in and of yourself, repent and believe. But when Christ heals your withered hand, your inability, so to speak, and puts life into your dead soul, he works in you. He works in you, but both the will and the do of his good pleasure, suddenly you’re able to comply. That’s what the scripture would reveal to us. So you were unable to stretch forth your previously withered hand and lay hold of Christ by faith. Now, we give out the gospel call, and we call all men to repent and believe on Christ, not because we believe the sinner has the ability to do so. but because Christ will enable his elect people when he wants them willing and makes them willing and able to come to the Savior. It would be an error for us to say, well, we shouldn’t give out the gospel call because man doesn’t have ability. That would be a hyper-calvinistic view. Our view is this. Man doesn’t have the ability. We give out the call and God enables, through Christ, enables people. by working in them to respond. That’s what we say. Now, the problem with man is he thinks because he responds, it was all him. We’re actually, it was Christ working in him. And that’s what we have to see. The spirit regenerates and makes that possible. Well, Churchill pointed out in ancient China, well, you can criticize the emperor if you want to, but you’ve got to commit suicide. We’re going to enact that. I’d like to enact that in England. when you criticize the prime minister. Seems that Jesus Christ is constantly getting criticized. Or, you know, for whatever he did or what his disciples did, and the main area of criticism we see in the two passages that we’ve looked at so far in this chapter was with regard to the Sabbath day. Yet Christ didn’t violate the Sabbath. Neither did his disciples. It was the Pharisees that were violating the Sabbath day. You find works of mercy, works of necessity are always good for the Sabbath day, plotting evil, and having malice in your heart, violate the Sabbath day. In dealing with the Sabbath, we see certainly that Jesus reveals here his omniscience. And we should keep that in mind. Well, let’s close with a word of prayer.